Agricultural Residues

Using agricultural residues for industrial purposes is a much more environmentally friendly practice than many residue disposal methods currently in use Agricultural residues are an excellent alternative to using virgin wood fiber for many reasons. Aside from their abundance and renewability, using agricultural residues will benefit farmers, industry and human health and the environment. Wheat straw, for example, is being grown at yields of between 1-3 tons per acre. This income is a boon to farmers. In fact, one manufacturer, Agriboard Industries, claims that local farmers stand to make more from selling the wheat straw than from selling the actual crop. Until recently, many farmers disposed of agricultural wastes by burning or landfilling them. The manufacturer’s currently using wheat straw as an industrial feedstock pay up to $45 per ton. Open access to the scientific literature means the removal of barriers (including price barriers) from accessing scholarly work. There are two parallel “roads” towards open access: Open Access articles and self-archiving. Open Access articles are immediately, freely available on their Web site, a model mostly funded by charges paid by the author (usually through a research grant). The alternative for a researcher is “self-archiving” (i.e., to publish in a traditional journal, where only subscribers have immediate access, but to make the article available on their personal and/or institutional Web sites (including so-called repositories or archives)), which is a practice allowed by many scholarly journals. Open Access rises practical and policy questions for scholars, publishers, funders, and policymakers alike, including what the return on investment is when paying an article processing fee to publish in an Open Access articles, or whether investments into institutional repositories should be made and whether self-archiving should be made mandatory, as contemplated by some funders.

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Last date updated on April, 2024